From an Email to an Exam: Developing LPIC-2 Version 4.5

May 3, 2017 - by Fabian Thorns

The news that version 4.5 of the LPIC-2 objectives for the 201 and 202 exams was released on February 13th 2017 means that we can already congratulate our first candidates on earning their LPIC-2 certification based on the new objectives.

LPI certification and exam objectives are a community-created, global standard that document the skills required by a Linux professional at each respective level.

Certification objectives describe what we expect a candidate to know, not only for their career aspirations, but also in order to pass our exams.

They set the scope of the exam and guide our candidates through their studies; helping them to make decisions about which topics to prioritise and to fill in blanks in their knowledge. Additionally, they help courseware authors and training partners to allocate pages and time to specific subjects.

Setting this standard requires a lot of involvement from the open source community and the development of the updated LPIC-2 certification started almost ten months before its final release.

The updated exam versions would not be possible nor credible without the engagement of our community. Everyone who took a beta exam, participated in online and local discussions and took our surveys did a great job in providing us with feedback and ideas which help us maintain our certification standards.

There were many more people who helped to prepare the new version of LPIC-2. To name a few of them, our German and Japanese translation teams worked hard to get their translated version ready; publishers and authors adapted their books and materials to match the new objectives; subject matter experts reviewed and ranked the questions to ensure that they are fair and appropriate.

Thanks to all of you!

In case you’re about to take an LPIC-2 exam soon, you should make yourself familiar with the updated exams. Our wiki hosts the new LPIC-2 version 4.5 objectives as well as a summary of the changes in version 4.5. If you’ve been studying against the 4.0 version of the LPIC-2 objectives, previous versions of exams which cover the prior version of the objectives are available for six months after a new release.

You might also want to try out some of these resources, which were the first ones to adopt the new objectives:

We also maintain a list of free training resources in our wiki. Whatever learning resources you use, please consider using the objectives, which are quite detailed, as a checklist to tick off as you go. This will ensure that you do cover everything while preparing for the exams.

Fabian Thorns is the Director of Certification Development at Linux Professional Institute, LPI. He is M.Sc. Business Information Systems, a regular speaker at open source events and the author of numerous articles and books. Fabian has been part of the exam development team since 2010. Connect with him on LinkedIn, XING or via email (fthorns at lpi.org).

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